ESF Transnational Platform 2014-2020
Launch of the Thematic Network EMPLOYMENT
14-15 December 2015, Brussels
PARTICIPANTS
· Member State representatives:
BE / ESF Agency Flanders (managing authority): Caroline MEYERS (chair), Stephanie BEAVIS, Ariane ROBER, Wouter VERDONCK ; Social and Economic Council of Flanders, Ria VAN PEER ; ESF Agency Wallonia (managing authority): Frédéric GOSGNACH
CZ / Ministry for Labour and Social Affairs (managing authority): Jaroslav MAROUSEK
EE / Ministry for Social Affairs: Janar KRIISKA
EL / Ministry of Labour, Social Security and Social Solidarity (national implementing body): Viktoria TRAVLOU
ES / Ministry for Employment and Social Security (managing authority): Jose LACLETA and Regional Government of Andalusia: Rafael ROSSI
FI / Ministry for Employment and Economy (managing authority): Outi VILJAMAA; SAK trade union: Pirjo VÄÄNÄNEN
FR / Ministry for Labour, Employment, Vocational Training and Social Dialogue (managing authority): Cécile LEVIEIL and Jocelyn VIDON
HR / Ministry for Labour and Pension system (managing authority): Vesna JAKOPEC
HU / Ministry for National Economy (managing authority): Orsolya KISGYÖRGY
IT / Ministry for Labour and Social Policy (managing authority): Giovanna SACCO
PL / Centre for European Projects (intermediate body): Maciej JAMROZIK
· EU Stakeholders: none
· European Commission: Sonia DE MELO and Marie-Anne PARASKEVAS (DG EMPL/F1, responsible for the ESF transnational platform), Colin BYRNE (DG EMPL/F1, expert on employment and ESF), Anita VELLA (DG EMPL/B1, deputy head of the employment strategy unit)
· AEIDL core team: Toby JOHNSON (team leader replacing Allen MERCER, thematic expert, which was sick), Antoine SAINT-DENIS (policy and social innovation expert, in charge of the minutes), Jyosta PATEL (gender expert)
REIMBURSEMENT OF PARTICIPANTS’ EXPENSES
Participants must send the expenses claim form provided and the original invoices and boarding passes/tickets by Friday 15 January 2016 to ESF Transnational Platform – AEIDL, 260 Chaussée Saint-Pierre, B1040 Bruxelles BELGIUM.
For questions and electronic tickets, please contact Aleksandra KOWALSKA ().
The rules related to travel, accommodation and daily allowance are described in this document:
AGENDA AND OBJECTIVES
As a chair, Caroline MEYERS reminded the two-fold objective of the meeting:
ü getting clarity on upcoming coordinated calls for proposals on transnational ESF projects;
ü launching a mutual learning process as regards ESF and employment issues between the Member States.
Toby JOHNSON, team leader of the ESF Transnational Platform managed by AEIDL and acting employment thematic expert, summarised the upcoming work as having three dimensions:
ü Process: form a community
ü Intellectual content: common problems and solutions; effective ways of organising calls for proposals
ü Dissemination and mainstreaming: impact on policies.
THE EU EMPLOYMENT STRATEGY
Anita VELLA (DG EMPL, deputy head of the Employment strategy unit) presented the EU employment strategy (employment and unemployment situation ; key priorities ; policy response on youth and long-term unemployment).
INSPIRATIONAL EXAMPLES OF TRANSNATIONAL COOPERATION
Toby JOHNSON reminded the legacy of previous ESF transnational cooperation initiatives, namely EQUAL and the Learning Networks 2007-2013.
His presentation mentioned some concrete tools developed in this context.
Some participants confirmed the impact:
In Andalusia, as a consequence of the regional administration’s involvement in the Learning Network related to ageing, some ESF measures targeted to the ageing workers were developed.
In Belgium/Wallonia, which was a member of the gender Learning Network, the tool developed to implement gender mainstreaming was followed up by training sessions and a capacity building strategy.
POLICY CONTEXT IN EACH MS
In short, three types of priorities were identified in the discussions:
ü Skills: workforce, job quality, migrants, mobility;
ü Entrepreneurship: social innovation, social economy, one-stop shops, incubators, start-ups;
ü Public employment services: counselling vouchers, self-guidance tools, systems and ICT.
Policy issues / Challenges / InterestsBE/Flanders / Jobs Pact concluded in Oct by social partners, focused on low-skilled youth and long-term unemployed, after Pact 2020 signed in 2009, with goals monitored yearly : increase labour market participation and working life conditions by preventative policies and shared responsibility
contains goals for employees and organisations (e.g: vouchers for career counselling ; workplace innovation; innovation) / 2 challenges: employment, esp. 55+ (only 44% employment rate - average retirement age 59) ; quality of working life (only half are satisfied, even less for self-employed)
More people at work, longer careers, quality jobs / Good practice
TNC calls start early 2016 - slightly postponed
BE/Wallonia / LTU, early school leaving / Entrepreneurship, esp. for women
link technological and social innovation
life long learning / incubators and reconversion units
networking between universities, research and business
link technological and social innovation
TNC is on TA budget
CZ / youth and 55+, too high workload for employment counsellors, lack of profiling / High-case load of counsellors
No profiling
ICT tools for self-guidance
EURES reform
Early school-leaving
Self-employment
Social economy
One-stop shops
Work with employers to create jobs
Promote part-time jobs
More training
EE / Disability (11% unemployed), LTU (55% of total U), low skills, inadequate official language skills (Russian-speaking groups are twice as much unemployed), elder unemployed (36% U rate > 50 years) / employment at pre-crisis level, inclusive labour market, open calls in the field of unemployment (launched 2 weeks ago) / TNC: 2 calls already launched, open to transnational actions
EL / highest unemployment rate, poverty, migrants / Brain drain
Asylum seekers
5-month jobs in public services
increase employment rate, strengthen labour demand
ES / Growth but high unemployment rates, structural problems (low productivity, early school leaving, huge gender gap, business creation)
19 OPs, 3 nationwide – youngsters is big priority, employment with a lot of content related to education / 19 OPs
Reduce unemployment with better public employment services, promote self-employment and business creation, more intensive action for 45+
Qualification programmes / Employment back, social innovation and social economy, mobility (mostly done at the regional level and focused on youngsters)
ES/Andalusia / Transition from unemployment to employment, requalification programmes and schemes for older people, internship schemes for mobility, youth and elderly / 30% unemployed, 57% among youth
FI / LTU, mismatch between supply and demand, impact of current migration flow / Developing skills of workers and companies, good models to make supply and demand better meet, flexsecurity principle, refugees, budget cuts / Workforce skills
Company skills
Job-job transfers (flexsecurity)
Start-ups
TNC: no calls
FR / reduce wage cost, while ESF is focussed on some target groups (youth, NEETs, elderly, LTU and frequently unemployed people) / personalised assessment and counselling, traineeship, vocational training (individual account for vocational training) / TNC: FR has not planned any coordinated calls
HR / Youth U, LTU
Modernisation of LM institutions / increased quality of employment policies
ALMP / TNC: 7 contracts launched (not open to transnational actions)
HU / Low LM participation esp. for some groups (young, elderly low skilled, women with young children) / Policy impact for some target groups / Exchange of experiences
Successful OPs
Employment is a multi-fund OP
IT / youth U, 40+ / PES reform, registration and profiling system, single information system
increase self-employment, promote mobility, traineeship, invest in competencies, implement youth guarantee plan, implement of rec on LTU, single info system / TNC: no immediate call
PL / In a positive economic context (growth, U below 9%), creation of highly paid quality jobs thanks to support to sectors green jobs and technologies / demography, ageing, participation of women and seniors, migrants' skills / High quality jobs
Migrants’ skills
TNC: is at national level
ORGANISING THE NETWORK
According to participants, SUCCESS of the TN Employment would mean/imply:
ü successful and transferable practice
ü involving social partners and stakeholders
ü inspiring transnational action for project promoters
ü combining social innovation and TNC
ü developing synergies among different networks
ü concrete and clear topics
ü practical tools
ü learning from the past
ü relevant baseline study
ü limited number of topics.
As regards the identified CONSTRAINTS, they are:
ü finding common ground between participants (given the different contexts)
ü lack of experience related to transnational cooperation among participants
ü difficulty to engage stakeholders
ü too many topics
ü too theoretical
ü reinventing the wheel
ü lack of commitment
ü governance problems inside countries
ü divergent timing for the calls.
It’s too early for most participants to specify what their own role in the TN could be.
The EC budget managed by AEIDL makes it possible to hold one additional physical meeting until July. Community work will thus rely also on IT tools being implemented (online meetings, discussion forum in January, database of TNC projects in April).
Each activity will be evaluated but the EC has not planned to contract an external evaluator.
GENDER AND SOCIAL INNOVATION MAINSTREAMING
Gender equality and social innovation are transversal issues to be mainstreamed in the TN employment as they will be in all the other TNs. Please see Toby JOHNSON’s presentation above.
Jyostna PATEL (AEIDL expert for gender) has developed guidelines about how to address these issues in the TNs:
She explained that, as a part of a yearly monitoring process, she will look at the baseline study and work programme to see how much gender will have been mainstreamed.
The Commission representative mentioned that, in the context of social policies, social innovation often consists in new ways to tackling social challenges, for instance thanks to integrated services. Antoine SAINT-DENIS (policy expert for social innovation) highlighted that it implies thinking ‘out of the box’ to create/allow new products, services or models. He also reminded that this is often not consensually welcomed, that it requires risk-taking and that social innovations often go along with new actors. Some guidelines have also been elaborated:
FUTURE CHALLENGES FOR THE EU LABOUR MARKET
Motivational speech by Raf BOEY, Dept Work & Social Economy, Flanders Regional Administration (BE):
The speaker addressed the impact of technologies, the evolution of job structure, job polarisation, skills and lifelong learning and the importance of training migrants. In a quickly changing environment where the hard skills are rapidly obsolete, the ability to learn and adapt will be the key soft skill.
COORDINATED CALLS FOR PROPOSALS
Toby Johnson (for presentation, see PDF file above) circulated the documents concerning the common general and theme-specific parameters, on which MSs (transnational cooperation contact points) were consulted early in the month. These documents should thus be the basis for the calls launched in MSs within the ESF transnational cooperation Common Framework.
The final version of the ‘Terms of Reference for the Coordinated Calls for transnational projects within the ESF Common Framework agreed at EU level’ was circulated after the meeting, on 22 December 2015:
The time constraint is high: only 4 out of the 11 participants representing a Managing Authority mentioned that it would be possible to respect the agreed calendar and launch the calls so that the different project promoters would get a common window for applying from June to September 2016.
Given that the project promoters need to be carefully prepared to the tight window of time allowed for building partnerships, it will be extremely important to give as soon as possible adequate visibility to the possibilities and intentions in the countries, both on EUROPA website and in national/regional communication platforms and newsletters.
After a discussion about the possibility to have theme-specific parameters, Caroline MEYERS, as chair of the meeting, came to the conclusion that no strong preference had been expressed, so that any subtheme would be eligible everywhere (for a list of these subthemes, see T. JOHNSON’s presentation file above). Countries who would nevertheless decide to restrict their calls to some specific aspects of employment were invited to inform others.
MUTUAL LEARNING ACTIVITIES & NEXT STEPS
The thematic expert will be in charge of submitting to the group a baseline study early next year.
The participants discussed different types of activities to organise in the TN: peer reviews, study visits, policy papers and operational tools. The group expressed primarily an interest for action-oriented content.
After collective exploration of wills and ideas, it was agreed that the work of the TN will follow two main themes:
ü Transition from LTU to work;
ü Transition from work to work (including self-employment).
Caroline MEYERS invited the attendants to, by 31 January:
- explore which external expert they could involve in the TN (as the TN should not be mere ‘club of managing authorities’);
- suggest some themes on which to start working;
- give additional information about their institutions’ intentions concerning the criteria for the coordinated calls for proposals;
- inform whether they are going to introduce a national thematic network.
Inviting a motivational speaker could become a systematic practice.
In order to allow enough time for discussions, the next meeting will consist in a first full day and a second half-day. It will be organised in March or April, as a physical gathering in Brussels – except if someone offers to host the meeting in the upcoming weeks.
YOUR CONTACT POINTSAleksandra KOWALSKA, ESF transnational platform, team assistant in charge of logistical issues:
Caroline MEYERS, ESF Agency Flanders, lead of the thematic network:
Allen MERCER, ESF Transnational platform, thematic expert:
Toby JOHNSON, ESF transnational platform, team leader and acting thematic expert:
Antoine SAINT-DENIS, ESF transnational platform, policy expert and social innovation expert:
Jyostna PATEL, ESF transnational platform, gender expert:
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